A Clash of Paradigms

Rarely have two visions of the future stood in sharper contrast than those represented by two recent publishing projects.

Project Drawdown is an ambitious new research and marketing campaign that is founded on the premise that climate change can be “solved” with a combination of smart technology and social engineering. Launched in April 2017, the project is the brainchild of business writer and environmental entrepreneur Paul Hawken, (Natural Capitalism, The Ecology of Commerce, Blessed Unrest), and outlined in his latest book Drawdown: The most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming (Penguin Random House).

The drawdown.org website states that it may be possible to “reverse global climate change” by rolling out and scaling up 100 existing solutions ... The solutions are technological, like renewable energy and energy efficiency measures, social ... like food choices and educating girls, and ecological, like restoring forests, grasslands, and soil to sequester carbon dioxide.”

Hawken defines “drawdown” as “the point in time when greenhouse gases in the atmosphere begin to decline on a year-to-year basis.” He says it’ll take about 30 years, and that in doing so we will, “improve well-being, create jobs, restore the environment, enhance security, generate resilience, and advance human health.”

A few years ago I’d have been excited about Project Drawdown. But Drawdown is heavy on the techno fix, and does little to challenge the logic of the market economy and the compulsion for growth that drives it. Nor does it question techno-industrialism, or consumerism, or the myth of “progress,” or the centrality of human beings over nature. And it doesn’t ask the reader to do much at all.

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Compare Hawken’s techno-utopian vision to what I consider the more compelling future envisioned by David Fleming in his two books Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It, and Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival, and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy (Chelsea Green). Fleming is the spiritual and conceptual godfather of the Transition Town movement. Though Fleming died in 2010, his colleague Shaun Chamberlin edited the books and Chelsea Green published them in late 2016. Fleming believed that the global market economy is doomed, and he shouts “Good riddance!” from nearly every page. The market economy, with its energy hungry machines, and its imperative to get the lowest price, got us into the mess we’re in, Fleming says. It’s certainly not going to get us out.

Instead, Fleming argues with clarity and wit that we need to segue now from the market economy to its sequel, i.e., much smaller scale, less energy-intensive, more localized communities of “reciprocity and freedom,” communities that prize food growing, knowledge-sharing, myth-making, musical celebrations, and convivial neighborliness. These are the basis of a society that can survive and thrive in the rocky “climacteric” that may already be upon us.

According to Chamberlin, Fleming’s true passion and genius was for that mysterious thing called ‘community,’ in all its disparate forms. He admired tradition and ceremony for their ability to engender cultural stability, and he was a passionate advocate for the critical importance of pubs.

Here’s a brief extract of Fleming’s definition of “Carnival” from Lean Logic:

Carnival: Celebrations of music, dance, torchlight, mime, games, feast and folly have been central to the life of community for all times other than those when the pretensions of large-scale civilization descended like a frost on public joy. ... The decline of carnival in the West began in earnest alongside the transition from a rural-centered culture to a city-centered one. The early stirrings of capitalism encouraged habits of soberness, and it has this fixation about people turning up for work on Monday morning. ... Carnival has been subdued, and its loss is serious. The modern market economy suffers from play-deprivation. ... The consequences are various, no doubt, but among them may be loneliness, boredom, anxiety, and depression. ...

I’m all for Project Drawdown. But I don’t believe it will “solve” the climate crisis. For that, I’ll see you at the pub.

My problem is Drawdown is that it excludes almost all sub-national/super-individual tools. For example, in Arizona, our corporation commission (PUC) has effectively made things like Solar Gardens illegal.
Drawdown seems to exclude the entire range of collaborative efforts - the Transition Town movement, crowd-funding, buying co-ops, local/regional trade missions, resilience networks of neighbors for food, elder-care, etc.
It is fine with me that Drawdown serves as a cookbook of options, rather than a manifesto for a whole new social structure. The will inevitably arise, if we localize the technologies and economies that provide us with everything. But as a cookbook, I think it is missing some whole categories of cooking.

tresenglish

1/9/2018 2:14:13 PM

My problem is Drawdown is that it excludes almost all sub-national/super-individual tools. For example, in Arizona, our corporation commission (PUC) has effectively made things like Solar Gardens illegal.
Drawdown seems to exclude the entire range of collaborative efforts - the Transition Town movement, crowd-funding, buying co-ops, local/regional trade missions, resilience networks of neighbors for food, elder-care, etc.
It is fine with me that Drawdown serves as a cookbook of options, rather than a manifesto for a whole new social structure. The will inevitably arise, if we localize the technologies and economies that provide us with everything. But as a cookbook, I think it is missing some whole categories of cooking.

Rex

12/13/2017 2:22:14 PM

When unemployment nearly hit 25% in 1933 USA and stayed just ten points lower through to WWII tells you something about "catastrophic resolution" as the principal vehicle of human-led change. It's also called "the hammer." I read "Drawdown" as a focus on implementers using all the tools they can. In the diversity of effort, we find solutions in failure. Unte should know the difference between book jacket hyperbole and reasonable actions. They will cost what they cost. You can pay me now, as I collect all that is owed. Sincerely, The Earth.

I just read "Drawdown", and agree with Eric wholeheartedly. I did not feel as if I was being asked to do anything at all to help solve the problem. The concepts of treading lightly, sharing, building rituals, singing, dancing, walking, and otherwise rejecting the totality of consumer culture were not emphasized in Drawdown, if they could be found there at all. Paul Murray